A Tale of Two Jims
How a letter to William Trevor led me to my father's childhood friend
My tale begins in the summer of 2006, when I came across a short story by William Trevor in The Guardian. The bio attached said that he was born in Mitchelstown, Co. Cork, in 1928; in the same town and in the same year as my father, Jim McCarthy.
I spent several months wondering whether I could contact Trevor, and find out if he had known my father, who by then was six years dead. Dad had rarely spoken about his childhood, and I had never been to his hometown. He had returned only a handful of times after leaving for England, aged sixteen. My annual trips to Ireland, as a child, were always to Co Clare, to my mother’s hometown. We never went to visit Dad’s family.
Eventually, I wrote to William Trevor, care of a short story competition that he was judging, using the postal address, in Mitchelstown, for competition submissions. I placed the letter in an unsealed envelope inside another envelope, along with a note to the competition administrator, Liam Cusack. I asked him to forward it, and said that he was welcome to read it first. In the letter, I asked if William Trevor had known my father as a boy.
Within days, I had a phone call from Liam Cusack. He told me Trevor had left Mitchelstown at the age of five, and that he wouldn’t have known my father. However, Liam was recovering from surgery, and was bored of resting, so he offered to do some research for me. ‘I think your father would have known Jim Parker,’ he said, and phoned Jim to ask. He had indeed known my dad, and that phone call led to us meeting in Mitchelstown in February 2007. ‘You’ve taken me back to the first half of the last century,’ Jim Parker said, and proceeded to tell me many of the things I had wanted to know about my father’s childhood.
The two Jims were born in Mitchelstown within a year of one another, and went to the same schools: the primary run by nuns, the secondary by Christian Brothers. Jim Parker, the Jim who was not my father, is one of the two most famous sons of Mitchelstown, along with William Trevor. The latter became a sculptor and a world-renowned novelist and short story writer; the former excelled in a different field.
I knew that my father had been left in Ireland to be raised by an aunt and uncle, his own parents going to England and not sending for him until he was sixteen years old. Whilst in Mitchelstown, I met the cousins Dad was raised with (or reared with, as he would have said), and learned that Dad had not wanted to go to England, to parents he barely knew, but as the arrangement was for him to stay with his aunt and uncle only until his schooling finished, he was not given a choice.
A friendship of my own stemmed from meeting my Dad’s childhood friend, conducted by letter, and later by email, and we met twice more, once staying at his home in Newbridge, Co. Kildare. Until I received a message from Liam Cusack in April 2020, telling me that Jim Parker had died of Covid complications, a day short of his 91st birthday.
I think of Jim Parker often, and cherish our friendship. I recently came across the obituaries from the Irish national press, which I printed out soon after his death. I knew him as a tiny, intelligent, caring, funny man. He also had an illustrious career, ending up as Chief of Staff of the Irish Army, holding many major peacekeeping roles on the international stage. The address stickers on the back of the envelopes from the letters he sent me gave his title as Lt Gen. Lieutenant General Jim Parker would have had a state funeral if it were not for lockdown restrictions. As it was, not even all of his closest family could attend his funeral.
I have kept the letters he sent me, and re-read them often. They are full of news, supportive comments, compliments about my writing, and terrible jokes, all written in careful, cursive script. They are the kind of letters I would have loved to receive from my father. As it was, Dad never even signed my birthday cards when I was a child, and never wrote to me after I left home. I wrote many letters home, as my parents were not on the phone until years after I had moved out. I rarely received a reply from my mother, and never from my dad. I don’t recall seeing Dad’s handwriting at all, not even on a cheque, as he was paid in cash all of his working life, and Christmas gifts from him were ten pound notes pinned to the Christmas tree.
My father, James McCarthy, better known as Jim, did not leave a written legacy, like his childhood friend, James Parker, better known as Jim.
I know that Jim McCarthy did once write letters to Jim Parker. They exchanged correspondence long after my father left for England, in 1944. The first time Jim Parker and I met, he told me about the last letter he had received from my dad. Job prospects in Ireland were not great at that time, and Jim Parker’s career opportunities were either helping to deliver bread, or working in a funeral parlour. He wrote to my father to tell him he’d joined the Irish Army. Jim McCarthy wrote back: ‘What a fool you are to get involved with that lot.’ That was the last Jim Parker heard from his friend, or heard of him, until sixty years later.
The two Jims had the same start in life, but followed widely differing paths. Both were born into poverty in rural Ireland, and raised in tiny houses in large families (my father with his four cousins, Jim Parker with his ten siblings). Jim McCarthy came to England aged sixteen, worked on building sites all his life, until well beyond retirement age, raised five children in a deeply unhappy marriage, and spent most of his time in the pub or the bookies when he wasn’t at work. His children do not remember him with affection – children of alcoholics suffer terribly. By contrast, Jim Parker, along with William Trevor, has left a legacy that survives his living years. He raised a family of six children in a long and happy marriage, and is remembered with great respect and affection.
There is a kind of legacy of my father now. My last visit to Mitchelstown, the last time I met Jim Parker, was to read at a Culture Night event in the town in 2014. My short story collection, As Long as it Takes, had recently been published, featuring a few stories based in Mitchelstown. The local newspaper, The Avondhu, published an article, featuring a photograph of Jim Parker, Liam Cusack and me, and it stated that my father, Jim McCarthy, was born in the town.
In 2008, I spent two days at the Small Wonder Short Story Festival in the beautiful setting of Charleston. William Trevor was making a rare appearance, a reading and a book signing. It was sold out, but I hung around the desk in the hope of ticket returns. Five minutes before the event, a few tickets were released, which had been reserved by people in the USA, and had not been collected. I took my place, and listened to a story set in a small town in Ireland, not unlike Mitchelstown, read in the same accent that I had heard throughout my childhood.
I queued to have my book signed, and had a few moments with the man. He looked frail, and the organisers were protective of him becoming too tired, and aware of the long queue of people waiting. I told him that my father was born in Mitchelstown, too, and in the same year, and that Trevor and I had a mutual friend, Liam Cusack, in Mitchelstown. 'Oh, how is he? I've heard he's not been well,' he said, but I was moved along before I could say more.
All my published books are now in Mitchelstown Connections, a library at the Arts and Heritage Centre in Mitchelstown. The collection is made up entirely of books written either by Mitchelstown natives, or their first generation offspring. My father may not have left a written legacy, but his daughter has done so, my books sitting alongside those of William Trevor in the town of his birth.
From The Irish Times: Lieut Gen James Parker obituary: Long life tracked changing State